The Atlanta Constitution du lieu suivant : Atlanta, Georgia • 23

METRO The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Wednesday, July 19, 2000 B3 Man charged in Rockmart deaths Long hours on road put truckers' wives out on a picket line Suspect Christopher Brown was picked up June 30 for a probation violation after the crime a few days earlier. Stroke victim and her daughter were killed; burglary spree trashed nearby unoccupied house. By Jack Warner jwarnerajc.com Rockmart A 19-year-old man who lived less than a mile away was indicted Tuesday for murder in the deaths of a 79-year-old woman and her daughter during a burglary binge. house-sitting elsewhere, Foster said. "We just thank God they weren't home," Foster said.

GBI crime scene specialists went over both houses, he said, and much of the evidence is still being processed at the GBI Crime Lab in DeKalb County. Two days after the slayings, Buchanan's car was discovered in a rural area just outside Rockmart. As a result of "numerous interviews" conducted by Rockmart police, Polk County police and sheriffs investigators, and by Aragon police, Cedartown police and the GBI, witnesses were found "who had observed Chris Brown in Mrs. Buchanan's car" on the morning of the killings, Foster said. Brown, who was on probation on a burglary conviction, was picked up on June 30 when investigators realized he was wanted for violating his probation.

Brown was held without bond until the Polk County grand jury in Cedar-town heard evidence, Foster said. Rockmart Police Chief Larry Chubb said that while the investigation is still not complete, "at this point it indicates that Mr. Brown acted alone." He entered the Arp house through a bathroom window, Foster said. Chubb said that he took Arp's purse, but neither Chubb nor Foster would discuss what other evidence was obtained linking Brown to the crimes. Foster would not comment on whether Brown was being investigated in the killing of another elderly woman, Ira Copeland, two years ago.

That victim lived only a few blocks from the Arp residence. The killing of the two women, Foster said, "is one of those cases that gets seared into your memory. We're extremely grateful for all the information and leads provided by the public." Christopher Eugene Brown, THE LANE RANGER JOEY LEDFORD e-mail: trafficajc.com who has been in the Polk County jail since June 30 for a probation Buchanan, who was staying overnight to care for her. Another daughter discovered their bodies the morning of June 24. The older woman had been asphyxiated, said GBI Special Agent J.P.

Foster. Her daughter had been beaten to death. Buchanan's car was missing. The women were killed sometime between midnight and 3 a.m. that day, Foster said.

He said Brown is also accused of breaking into a home directly behind the Arp house and ransacking it, "really trashing it," the same night, Foster said. The residents were violation, was charged with multi ple counts of murder, armed robbery, burglary, aggravated battery and aggravated sexual battery, authorities said. He is accused of killing Irene Arp, who had suffered a stroke two weeks earlier, and her 59-year-old daughter, Linda Unsolved slaying on lesson plan Usually when there's a picket line at a metro Atlanta truck terminal, it's being manned by drivers upset over their pay. But in a demonstration symbolic of the current state of trucking, the pickets at the Yellow Freight System truck terminal off South Cobb Parkway this week were driver's wives. The four women weren't complaining about pay, which they say is fair, but about never seeing their husbands because their jobs require them to be gone virtually all the time.

They said they are required to work so many hours they can't make doctor or dental appointments, much less see their children play ball or star in the school play. One driver, they alleged, was denied time off to see his son graduate from high school. "These guys need some time off," said Torn Reinhart of Car-tersville, who decided like the others to give me their names despite fears of retaliation against their husbands. "They want to work them to death." Current federal trucking regulations limit truckers to 70 hours' work over an eight-day period. The wives claimed Yellow routinely violates rules that require drivers be given time off after working six tours three round trips to a distant city within six days.

"I had surgery and my husband couldn't spend any time with me," said Lola Scalf of Dallas, in Paulding County. The women said they are concerned the constant time pressures make their husbands too weary to be safe drivers. "I don't want my husband to be so fatigued that he wrecks," said Reinhart. "My husband has had to pull off the road and take a nap," said Scalf. Alfred Evans, Yellow's Atlanta terminal manager, declined comment, referring me to Roger Dick, a company spokesman in Overland Park, Kan.

He denied that drivers are refused needed time off. "We give drivers time off if they have a family emergency or a family situation," he said. "It doesn't even need to be an emergency. It can be a wedding or whatever." Dick also denied that Yellow's Atlanta drivers are denied "earned time off after six tours. "It is governed by the contract and by operating policy in Atlanta," he said.

"Six tours and they get 44 hours off." Tambra Watkins of Lithia Springs, however, said her husband is regularly denied his "ETO" by Yellow, which denies ETO when it posts a notice that more than IS percent of the drivers have called in sick. "When that sign is up, yoii can't take your ETO," she said. "My husband says that sign doesn't come down until it's convenient for them." Scalf said she missed a family reunion, "probably the last one my mother will be alive for," because her husband was denied time off. "We have no family life together none at all," she said. Karen Grissom of Cartersville said drivers are often told at a terminal that they have to report back in eight hours as required in the contract.

But because they have to wait for a ride to a motel and wait for a ride back, they don't get enough sleep. "They might get four or four and a half hours, if they're lucky," she said. Proposed changes to federal hours-of-service rules might even mean longer days for truckers. The Clinton administration proposal would make it legal for truckers to drive 12 hours each 24-hour period. Current rules limit drivers to 10 straight hours on the road, followed by eight hours of required rest.

"The new rules would make them work more hours," said Scalf. Company spokesman Dick called the protesters "a very small minority of the 240 line haul drivers who work there." He yri IW A fcv A''Af SUNNY SUNG Staff Tara Pierce (left), Suzanne Gagliardo and Carrin Spinks attend a criminal profiling class at Kennesaw State University. The class is looking into the 1984 slaying of a Smyrna woman. By Brad Schrade bschradeajc.com Stan Crowder doesn't seem like a man who would be fixated on murder. Crowder, 47, is a major with the Georgia National Guard at Dobbins Air Reserve Base.

Also a part-time professor, he and his wife of 28 years have a daughter who mercifully looks more like his wife than him, Crowder likes to say. But a look at the syllabus of Crowder's "criminal profiling and analysis" night course at Kennesaw State University, and his lifelong interest is revealed. He's fascinated by killers. "When I was 13 1 read about a serial killer in the Saturday Evening Post," Crowder said. "He'd killed eight nursing students.

We could answer the who, what, when, where. But I remember thinking, 'But why did he do So when Crowder conceived a sociology class on criminal profiling, now in its second semester, he wanted his students to have a real case. Crowder looked to the Cobb County Police Department, where he worked for seven years, for an unsolved case. He got a brutal one. Terry Kopec rarely drank, never smoked, didn't date much and saved the money she earned as a flight attendant to purchase a new condominium in Smyrna.

She was 27 when she moved on March 19, 1984. A month later, on April 23, she was found dead, her half-naked body lying on her bed. She had been tortured, raped and strangled. Her killer tied her wrists behind her back and dangled a rope around her neck. He knotted the rope to a metal bar for leverage.

Her body was found lying facedown in a lace-and-satin pillow. "This is the oldest case I'm working," said Cobb County police Detective Eddie Herman, who has investigated about 300 homicides in 14 year. "I think whoever killed her is in the case file." Crowder's 34 students mostly women in their 20s are dissecting the case using documents from the case file and what they said Yellow Freight has "the most learn in the class, to draw a criminal profile. They will turn over their profiles at the end of the semester to Cobb detectives. Herman flexible dispatch and call rules of anybody." The women have no reason to fear speaking publicly about their Mr concerns, he said.

"There's some fear of retaliation simply for talking to the press," Dick said. "I want to state for the record that absolutely will not happen. We do not conduct our business that way." will track any leads that appear promising. Profiling is an investigative technique often used when leads in a case have gone cold. Detectives use it to narrow a field of possible suspects.

They use physical evidence cigarette butts found at a crime scene, the way a victim was tied or the weapons used to a draw a possible profile of the killer, hoping to gain some insight into the suspect's behavior and motivations. That experience has resonated with her as she's examined Kopec's homicide. "I keep thinking that could have been me," said Gagliardo, 30, who believes she may have linked Kopec's death to another case in Michigan. Herman plans to follow her lead. Sandra Smith, 22, took the class because she's considering police work as a career.

"I think about the case all the time," Smith said. "I had some guy friends who couldn't stomach the crime scene photos." This week, Herman and Mark Bishop of the Medical Examiner's Office attended the class. Students peppered them with ques-tions about the case, holes in the original investigation, possible suspects they've identified. "It absolutely helped us," Herman said afterward. "It got us to think about things that may have been there that we may not have paid as much attention to as maybe we should have.

I'm going to go at their request and follow up with a couple of these things. What have I got to lose?" Woodstock board member resigns issues from the board. In a state ment read at a special called Stan Crowder will turn in his students' criminal profiles to detectives in the Terry Kopec homicide case. council meeting to oust Phil Jones, he told council members that he had done nothing illegal or unethical but was being tossed Woodstock Planning and Zoning Board member Phil Jones resigned his post Tuesday night under pressure from the City Council over a perceived conflict of interest. His wife, Susan Jones, serves on the council and votes on zoning out of office because he was married to a council member.

Suzanne Gagliardo is a psychology major taking the class. Years ago she was stalked by a man who eventually was arrested for a similar crime. 200 attend hearing on golf course LAW AND ORDER would become a golf course and the 21 acres would become a new park. Opponents don't like the idea of turning a public park over to developers, but supporters say it would be a way to save the 21-acre parcel from commercial development. About 200 people attended a meeting in Sandy Springs Tuesday to discuss a developer's proposal to create a golf course on what is now Ridgeview Park.

Developer Tom Turrentine wants to buy 21 acres in Sandy Springs and swap it. The park Forklift fatally crushes worker 4 43-year-old man was crushed beneath his fork-, lift Tuesday on a road-widening job near Stockbridge, becom-m ing the third metro Atlanta construction worker killed on the job in less than a week. Henry County police Sgt. J.W. Peaden said the worker fell from the motorized loader when he hit a 36-inch-deep culvert in the red earth.

The accident occurred about 4 p.m. on a dirt extension of Springdale Road off Brannan Road, about a mile from Ga. 42, said Peaden. The identity of the worker, an employee of Pittman Construction Inc. of Conyers, was withheld pending notification of relatives.

Fellow employees said he had been with the company about seven years. Vincente Manzanares, 43, of Gainesville, was killed Friday when a crane boom fell on top of him at an asphalt plant in Gwinnett County, and a 37-year-old construction worker was killed Thursday when he was struck by a backhoe shovel in Cherokee County. Georgia weather forecasters and state environmental officials say this is the worst two-year drought since record keeping began in 1 895. Government officials hope the restrictions below will prevent the necessity of more drastic measures in the future. 24 hours CARROLL Lake and left three others severely damaged.

The apartments are in a two-story, four-unit building in the complex near the intersection of Hambrick and Rockbridge roads. One burned and the other three suffered water damage, leaving them uninhabitable. No one was injured in the blaze, reported at 6:39 p.m. ATLANTA Arguments start today in investment fraud Opening arguments begin today in the federal trial of Theresa Stanford and Raymond J. McClendon, who are accused of defrauding the city of Atlanta of $15 million.

Stanford, the former chief investment officer for the city, and McClendon, former vice chairman of a politically connected securities firm, Pryor, McClendon, Counts are charged with steering the city's investment business from 1992 to 1994 to McClendon's firm. In return, the firm funneled more than $350,000 to a company owned by Stanford's husband, federal investigators say. It took two days to complete jury selection for the trial, which may last as long as five weeks. CHEROKEE COUNTY Teenager killed trying to regain control of car A teenager from the Macedonia com munity died in a wreck on Ga. 20 about 11:45 a.m.

Tuesday. Senior Trooper Leamon Hughes said Jessica K. Champion, 16, was driving west on Ga. 20 near Water Tank Road when she ran off the road. She swerved to get back on, but went too far and into the eastbound lane, where she collided with a pickup driven by Kenneth R.

Brainlette of Rome. Bramlette was taken to North Fulton Regional Hospital, where he was in stable condition, according to a hospital spokesman. DOUGLAS COUNTY Brush fire was arson, authorities think A brush fire that shut down westbound traffic on 1-20 during rush hour Monday, causing a 10-mile-long traffic jam, likely was arson, said Douglas County Fire Chief Scott Spencer. The fire started about 3 p.m. behind a Sam's Club at Ga.

5 and 1-20, Spencer said. It spread to the interstate and at one point shut down westbound lanes, backing traffic up to Six Flags Over Georgia. The fire damaged about five acres and threatened the West Pines golf course. It burned some woods near the course and destroyed a rain shelter near the fifth tee, said golf pro Dennis Sullivan. Spencer said investigators have leads in the case.

from staff reportb Weekends; even-numbered addresses water on Saturdays and odd-numbered addresses water on Sundays. Outdoor residential water use, such as car-washing, Is limited to midnight to 10 am. on weekends. COWETA 5 a.m. to 1 0 p.m.; odd-numbered addresses water on odd days, and even-numbered addresses water on even days.

FORSYTH FULTON (outside Atlanta city limits) NEWTON 1 0 a.m. to 10 p.m.; odd-numbered addresses water on odd days, and even-numbered addresses water on even days. ATLANTA DOUGLAS FAYETTE GWINNETT HALL HENRY PAULDING ROCKDALE Batallion Chief Robert Wesley said one building was destroyed and another half-consumed by the fire. He said the cause was under investigation. Asie, in tears, said he recently had spent thousands of dollars on a new computer system.

Pine Lake apartment destroyed by blaze A fire Tuesday destroyed one unit at the Polo Club Apartments near Pine BARTOW CHEROKEE CLAYTON COBB COWETA DEKALB DEKALB COUNTY Fire causes $1 million damage to business An auto body shop owner estimated his losses at about $1 million in a fire Tuesday that consumed most of his business. No one was injured in the 5 p.m. blaze at Emperor Motors, 1468 Conley Drive in southwest DeKalb County, though three people were working at the time, including the owner, Emmanuel Asie. DeKalb Fire 1 0 a.m. to midnight; oddeven restrictions WALTON Sources: Individual counties, municipal governments Staff.